Open Door
by legendarytobes
Summary: Set during "Lexmas," where not everything has to end in tragedy and Lex has to accept the impossible.


Chloe sighed and pushed her hair behind her shoulder. Lex thought it was getting far too long anyway, just all over the place in the lot earlier. Was it only this morning? Could it even feel like that? Everything had changed since he'd even been at the Kent home receiving his award from the senator. Lana had almost died. Wait had she? Did Clark's...could the Fortress reverse death?

It was alien, right, how was he to know what advanced technology could or couldn't do?

All he knew was that he was sitting at the kitchen table in Clark and Chloe's aparment, sipping the coffee Sullivan had made for him, and trying to remember how to breathe. Alexander was in the couples' guest room, most likely not speaking. He'd just been nice enough with Chloe's heavy hints to retire to his room. If Lex poked his head in there, he was sure his son would barraged him with hundreds of questions about Superman he had no way to answer.

Especially not how dumb was he not to have seen it, not to have known the second Chloe ran her Pulitzer winning interview exactly the kind of scam those two were running. Before when he'd been up to his eyeballs in 33.1 research and military contracts, his mind had been sharp. He'd have known, connected, living this life had made him soft and stupid.

Did it even matter, though? He had Alexander and Clark had Lana and Lily on life support thriving slowly at his Fortress of Solitude. Clark could be from Melmac and eat house cats for all Lex really cared as long as Lily and Lana lived. He'd be nothing without them, not ever.

"What is this?"

"Oh it's this herbal roast thing from Morocco that Clark and you don't mean that at all, do you?" Chloe said, crinkling her eyes back at him.

How many conversations had the two of them shared around this table? Hours upon hours of Chloe probing Lex's memory and stories for the lynchpin she needed. All those nights when Clark was out past two and Lex stayed because he didn't think it was safe to leave her alone in the city, that he could always crash on their couch if he needed, then it was really Clark out saving the world. All those times he'd been scared that Lionel could have tapped the apartment and Chloe assured him he hadn't. That wasn't bravado. Clark would have heard it, and even if he hadn't, there was no doubt that The Batman could find any bugs Lionel even attempted.

Hell, why even bother with his stories and old connections? Clark must have been able to bust in and as much proof as either of them needed not to be sued for libel or murdered by Lionel's less subtle means.

"No, what is this charade you and Clark have? All this time? Am I a joke to you?"

Chloe sighed and sipper her coffee. "You and Lana are our best friends, and basically feel like you always have been. Hell Alexander is like the son we never had. I hope Lily too when she's better."

Lex swallowed before he spoke again. "But you don't trust us. Clark says he cares about us, and I'm grateful, never think I'm not that his machine could save Lana and Lily's lives. Still, how can he really care about us and lie to our faces, and you helped. So was it some joke? Just laugh at us behind our backs?"

Chloe considered him, sharp green eyes calculating all her angles. He knew that look. It was what made her so dangerous as a reporter. It was what had made her perfect to help him take his father down, little good as that had done the first time. "Clark never tells anyone, period."

"You're sharing his bed and being his press agent. I'd say he does."

"He told Pete when we were in high school because Pete found his ship after the tornado. He only told me because an accident dragged me with him to the Arctic the day he built his fortress. The only people who know besides me, Martha and Jonathan are in the League and not nearly as many as you think, just a precious handful."

"The Batman and Green Arrow, I assume."

"They figured it out on their own in different ways. Wonder Woman and The Manhunter. That's all. It's all he'll let, untill now. Honestly, if I hadn't literally been freezing to death in the damn tundra, I doubt he'd ever have told me."

Lex nodded and kept his grip on the mug. He needed this, this contact to something tangible when his world was flying apart. "But he did. He must never have trusted me or Lana."

"He does, and look what he did."

"I said I was grateful. Lana when she's better will be ecstatic. I'm glad he didn't choose his secret over our lives, you have no idea how much."

Chloe surprised him by squeezing his hand. She was a tactile person, that was sure, one to hug everyone if you let her, but she wasn't necessarily that way with him. It was Clark she practically hung off of. "He never tells anyone voluntarily. Think about it-people either find him, lives are on the line, or he can't hide it. It's not about you or Lana at all. It's about him. It ate him up every day to lie to you guys, to make stupid excuses to skip early out of dinners, to make me explain away missing holidays. He just couldn't."

"Because I'm a Luthor?"

"Because," she concluded, shaking her head, her grip still firm. "He's embarassed. He's still that kid in Smallville scared when you had a room about him or I pressed about his adoption, deep down I mean. It doesn't matter that the whole planet practically worships Superman."

Lex eyed her. Sometimes that had worried him, how reliant people were on not just Superman but the whole League as if some day they might forget how to solve problems for themselves. He'd just never said as much outloud because Chloe Sullivan was synonymous with Superman. Hell, every villain in the city knew to kidnap her first to get to him. Still, Lex didn't necessarily think that the way the world viewed Superman...Clark...was good overall for anyone.

Least of all Clark and his sense of reality. Of course, if he'd known all this time he had Chloe to ground him as she always had, he'd have worried less all along.

"I've noticed."

"But Clark...all he can do, he has to do it to sleep at night. All he'd like is what you have, Lex. That's why we love both of you. You're normal, the touchstone we have to real life."

"I am?"

Chloe nodded and took her hand back, finally pulling her hair up with a rubber band and out fo her face. "He really feels like your his brother. Not telling you is safer, was safer I mean. I don't think you or Lana would ever tell anyone, but if they thought they could-"

"My father's been hit the hardest of almost anyone by Superman. They've been locked in battle for years when another mutant or military project runs amok. He'd torture it out of someone, get a mutant who reads minds to pull it from me or Lana."

"Or Alexander or Lily," she finished shaking her head. "We're selfish to tell you. I...if you'd rather not know, the Manhunter can fix all of you."

"Blank us?"

"Just the last forty-eight hours. If Lionel hurt any of you to get to us, I'd never forgive myself."

Lex smiled and hugged her. "You put him in jail at least for a while at eighteen. When hasn't knowing you been a pain in my ass?"

"Maybe the first few months."

"No, you gave hard hitting interviews at fourteen. My point is that Lionel knows I'm your source. He's not a fool. He'll retaliate once he regroups behind bars. Clark's secret has little to do with that. We're targets because we're Luthors, and Lionel might one day wish Alexander and Lily could be more than Lucas and I ever were."

"Then I guess the best way to face everything is to be the three musketeers again?"

"Maybe six," Lex added, hugging her over the shoulders. "I wish he felt he could have said something. I admit, when I was younger I did things...maybe it wouldn't have been the right time to hear it."

"You know now and that's good. He really loves Alexander and he was on my commlink," she said gesturing to her ear and the tech he'd always assumed previously was a Blue Tooth. He knew better now; probably had her plugged into Clark and the League both. "...he just gushed already about Lily. You'd think he'd never seen a baby before."

"Can I ask something?"

"No tentacles. It's all really pretty normal; not a hentai girl."

Lex snickered. Well at least her directness never faltered even in Earth-shattering events. "No, you and Clark have been married longer than me and Lana. That's been almost seven years and he dotes on Alex. I...why don't you have kids? You were just too busy foiling evil and dominating journalism?"

Chloe's smile faltered and she stared down at the chipped wood of the table. "He can't. I...we're not compatible like that, I guess. The Fortress wasn't too helpful on that score. It's not very human-friendly to begin with and I'm not sure it wants half-breeds anyway."

"Don't."

She shrugged. "That's about what it said when I asked. I never told Clark I did that, since he hates me going there. So no, Lex, he loves your family as if it were his own because to him it is. And taking care of Lily and Lana is the least he could do."

Lex smiled back at her, trying to stay reassuring and calm. "Anything you want, Chloe, right? I might actually inherit things, have them revert to me depending on how the bloodbath at LuthorCorp plays out. After all the indictments, I mean. If you want-"

"I want you to understand we didn't lie because it made us feel good or it was funny, just because we had to and we hated every minute of it."

"Then I think this is better," he said leaning over and kissing her forehead. "Now, can you do me a huge favor?"

"More than saving your wife and child?"

"Oh, far far bigger. Alexander is still awake, I'm sure, and he has about three thousand questions about Superman so you, Sullivan, are going to answer every damn one of them while I sleep. I'm sure you'll still be at it seven hours from now."

She chuckled and stood. "So he's inquistive?"

"He's a Luthor, isn't he?"

She nodded and kissed his cheek. "Not a bad thing, not anymore."


End file.
